Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to our guests. Both of the presentations were very concise and very helpful for our work. You're our first witnesses as we do this study, so thank you.
I'll start with War Child. The recent events in Nigeria and in CAR, Central African Republic, give us a couple of good examples of how to deal with the issue of child protection and maybe how to innovate and improve the approach. I think in the case of Nigeria, there's a state there; it has problems in the north, as we know. It's the fastest-growing economy, yet there are ten million children who are not in school, six million who are girls. Of course, the recent events have grabbed the attention of the world. In that case, it seems we have a government that seems unwilling at times to actually fulfill their responsibilities under some of these international conventions.
In the case of CAR, it seems that we have a state...well, there isn't a state, in essence, as we would normally design a state or reference a state. It seems unable to fulfill the requirements of protecting children. So in the one case they're unwilling and in the other case unable.
I was struck with your points, Dr. Nutt, around building the right kind of capacity—in other words, the right kind of response—and that it has to be tailored to the different situations. I've given two recent conditions that we've been seized with. You mentioned Syria, which our committee just finished a study on.
The question is, how do we build that into the response? I agree with you in terms of going beyond just the shelter, water, and basic needs that we normally associate with child protection. But in the case of Nigeria, for example, there's seemingly an unwillingness to act from the state—or, in the case of CAR, an inability to.
When you're enumerating these issues around child protection you note that we need to expand and provide the safer spaces, and education, and employment—I couldn't agree with you more—cash for work programs, for instance, as well as setting up schools that function as soon as possible. But how do you do that in those two scenarios?